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A little while ago when the Steam Summer sale was a thing, Spore went on sale for a good 77 percent. N' I was like, yo! My childhood! Its on sale! So, of course, I had to buy the thing because you know, whos going to pass up buying their favorite childhood game at a discounted price? So, I have effectively finished all Stages of the game, and I am here to leave a full review, free of bias or anything. The way this review will go down is first Ill review a few misc items about the game, and then I will go on to review each of the five stages of the game: Cell Stage, Creature Stage, Tribal Stage, Civilization Stage, and lastly, Space Stage. Then, at the end, I will conclude by giving my overalll thoughts on the game, and what grade I give it. Shall we begin? I think so.

Misc.

Okay, well to boot of the misc section, lets start with the fact that the game doesnt even ♥♥♥♥ing launch. Legit, no ♥♥♥♥. If you try to boot the game up of steam it says "Error 20, no data directory found." This isnt like some random glitch that only happens every so often, no, a whopping 75% of people have this problem if you buy Spore through Steam. The fix to this problem (which wasnt even provided by EA, it was user made) was to go into an application called REGEdit and fix the serial key directory, and its a bunch of complicated ♥♥♥♥ and bull. This fix isnt gaurenteed to work, and in fact, it did not work for me. There was not a single fix online that would allow me to launch this goddamn game. So I said, ♥♥♥♥ it, I payed for this game, and I decided to torrent it instead. I want you to note that I bought the ultimate version and it came with 2 DLC that I cannot play because of this stupid glitch So we're already off to a really bad start. Great job EA!

Now, second of all, I just wanted to say, the graphics have not aged well, whatsoever. Instead of trying to describe it to you, just look at these pictures (careful they're kind of really big photos):

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And these are pictures from a pretty decent, if not great computer. But if graphics dont weigh in that much and for you, its really about the core gameplay, I suppose thats okay. But, just be forewarned of the crappy graphics Spore has.

Another thing that really bothered me was the lack of endgame battles for each stage. Once you completed a stage, no bossfight, no challenge, no nothing.

The last thing I want to talk about is EA's lack of cooperation to patch the game, and the copius amounts of bugs and glitches there are. There are more known glitches in this game than Pokemon Red, and thats saying something. Here, just look at this wiki page about all the recorded "major" glitches: http://spore.wikia.com/wiki/Glitches. And these are just the major recorded ones. http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/32441.page
When I played the creature stage, at least five times all the creatures went invisible and countless times the game froze and then when it finally resumed there were random invisible walls in random places. Yeah, this games glitch scene is brutal, so keep that in mind as we go forward.

Cell Stage

Honestly, Im going to keep this on brief because there is absolutely no variation in this stage, whatsoever. Its the same boring bland formula for about forty five minutes to an hour of gameplay. Basically, you start of ass a little cell, and depending on whether you are a carnivore or a herbivore you eat other cell creatures or eat random floating plants. There is a little customization to your cell creature about flagella and little attack mechanism, but honestly it doesnt really matter at all because the stage is easy as all hell. Really nothing stands in your way, even if you get no upgrades whatsoever. This goes on for an hour!

A whole hour of swimming around as a little turd cell and eating stuff. Nothing else, just, you the cell, eating stuff. The gameplay is basically just a whole buttload of clicking. You click on the food you want to eat, you click on the cells you want to attack, you click to go places. Its really nothing special in terms of controls, nothing redeeming at least. This entire stage, could be a minigame on a flashgame site like Miniclip.com or something. And somehow, they made an entire, massive stage out of it. Oh well, better luck next stage right? I hope so, because the first two parts of the game (booting up and cell stage) have sucked infinitely.

Creature Stage

Eventually you evolve from your little cell self and become a creature with arms and legs. Yay! You crawl out of the ocean with these new found legs and start organizing your species into packs. This stage is considerably better than the last one. Instead of just eating food, this stage adds a considerable amount of new features. Here accessorizing body parts on your creature is actually kind of fun and does in fact, actually give you an advantage. This portion of the game plays out kind of like a crappy version of World of Warcraft. Basically, these little prompt boxes come up, these little "quests." Like "Hunt 5 Olomaalomas. Reward: 75 DNA Points." So basically the gist is that when you do these little prompts you get a sort of currency reward. With these DNA points you can purchase upgraded body parts like a better mouth or a new pair of wings. This brings me to my next point. These new body parts have perks. Like "Bite Level 3," or "Strike Level 4." These are attacks that you can now use. You can use these attacks to hunt down other animals. Or, body parts will give you social perks like Charm, Sing, Pose, or Dance. These items allow you to befriend other species, and maybe use them in your pack. Your pack are other species that follow you and do your bidding. The gameplay is still for the most part clicking, like clicking where you want to go, attack, or socialize with. The gameplay is a little more advanced on this stage, but it is still for the most part rudimentary. Towards the end of the game the gameplay gets extremely repetitive, to the point where you just want to get this horescrap over with and get to the next damn stage. I mean by the 80th time you do the same little dance and sing minigame, youre pretty ready to move on. And with that, moving on.

Tribal Stage

Yay, next stage! We dont have the same repetitive gameplay again! Okay so, this section of the game plays out like a basic RTS. First thing I want to say is the controls are clunky as can be. Okay, moving on. In the creature creator this time, you get to outfit your creature with tribal garments and such. Its kind of fun and different, but the novelty wears off after awhile because of how bland the items are. This plays out exactly like the creature stage, but in RTS form. You can go around and choose to befriend the other creatures or kill them. I was kind of dissapointed at the fact that that it was the same damn thing I was getting tired of in the creature stage, the only thing that was changing was that you control a group. Okay, I suppose Im exaggerating a bit, there is the whole tribe buildings customization thing going on. Kind of like how the body parts in the creature stage provided either attacking or social advantages, you could build buildings that supplied weapons or music instruments. Its basically the same thing, but now you just have "tools."

But there is something good that this stage improved. In the previous sections if you died, nothing really happened. You just respawned with no consequences whatsoever. However, in this section of the game, if all your tribe members die, you start over. All the way over. This is something the game needed because there was literally no difficulty factor whatsoever in the previous stages, making them considerably less fun. You actually have to think about what youre doing compared to the mindlessness of the previous 2 stages, and manage a lot of things at once. For instance, random wild animals can steal your food, while you are in the middle of a brutal raid against a neighbouring tribe. Things like that. This section of the game would have been less reppetetive than the last two stages because it varied with the challenges and stuff, had it not been THE EXACT GAMEPLAY FROM THE CREATURE STAGE BUT JUST A LITTLE DIFFERENT. Anyways, moving right along then.

The Civilization Stage

Once you conquer (or befriend) all of the other tribes on your planet, you are ready to enter: The Civ Stage. This stage is a much more advanced RTS, and is actually my favorite stage, because it provides a big variation from the crappy gameplay in the past stages. You start off by designing your town hall, something thats different. Youre designing buildings this time around, and its actually pretty fun. Next you make your vehicle. This is where stuff gets good. You can equip some massive guns and customize your ship in any way you like, like make a badass pirate ship. This isnt much different from the creature creator but oh yeah, you get to use BIG ♥♥♥♥ING GUNS! You can either be nice to cities, or be a total dick and kick their butt in war. But! The great part is, it isnt the same as the first 3 stages! Instead of a nice charming dance to show them you like them, you talk diplomacy with them. The diplomacy isnt anything too fancy, but dear god, am I glad to break away from that damn dancing and singing crap. To show youre hostile you can declare war and yknow, send a million tanks their way instead of biting them like in the previous 2 stages. This time around, the game isnt won by collecting DNA like in the past 3 ♥♥♥♥ING STAGES! YAY! You win it one of 3 ways! The religous way, which you end everything peacefully, the kill everything way, and the economic way which is where you set up a lot of trade routes and buy other cities. Also, in the cities you make you can buy houses, factories, and entertainment buildings, which if placed strategically can provide a big benefit to the citizens of your city. Your city is much more customizable than in the tribal stage. All in all, this was the best, and maybe the only stage I enjoyed in Spore. On that good note, lets read on.

Space Stage

Next is the space stage, where most of the meat of the game is. Now, you can create a spaceship in the creator, just like the other vehicles youve made. Basically you get random widgets and gadgets attached to your spaceship to go around abduct, kill, and scan species while flying volatile over random planets (which by the way, yet again the controls are terrible). The old diplomacy is still there, and you go around colonizing planets. It was kind of annoying how everytime you colonized a planet and made a civilization there you had to design the buildings over and over again. It was cool the first couple a times, but it really gets annoying the next 500 times. Seeing a common theme here? Repetitiveness plagues this game. Anyways, as I was saying, this stage of the game is terrible. It goes on forever with little to no changing in the mechanics... and this stage of the game goes on for a very, very long time. And its just the same thing. Over. and over. again. Also, you always have someone telling you what to do and holding your hand in this stage. It feels more like a tour than a game. It just seemed to drag on forever and I missed messing around and making weird creatures in the creature creator or making ships or houses or whatever it was. Hated it.

Conclusion

This game just kind of feels like five different mini games smooshed together in a linear path and it just doesnt really work. I have no idea what I loved so much about this game as a kid, but its got a jack of all trades, master of none sort of thing going on. It tried to do too many things, and it didnt do any of those things well. It set no consequences for the player and no real reward either besides getting to the next stage. Oh and dont get me started on the repetitiveness! My verdict? Dont buy the damn game. Unless the game goes on sale for 5 dollars or less, dont buy it. Its a terrible game that is only really fun for a bit.

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